A Non-invasive Monitoring of Propofol Concentration in Blood by a Virtual Surface Acoustic Wave Sensor Array

Abstract

Propofol (2,6-diisopropylphenol) is widely used in total intravenous anesthesia. An unknown drug concentration in blood always leads to some side effects in patients with propofol injection. However, the drug concentration in the blood is hard to be continuously measured since invasive sampling causes a loss of blood at each measurement. Here, we introduced a virtual surface acoustic wave sensor array (VSAWSA) to non-invasively detect the propofol concentration in blood through exhaled gases. Calibration was conducted by a parallel test using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with solid-phase micro-extraction (SPME) for preconcentration. The limit of detection of VSAWSA reached 0.15 nmol/L for propofol. Six cases of clinical trials was conducted to compare the exhaled propofol concentrations to the plasma concentrations controlled by target-controlled infusion (TCI). The calibration by GC-MS ensured the feasibility, reliability, and accuracy of the VSAWSA (R = 0.9904, p <0.001). The clinical monitoring data by VSAWSA showed an excellent consistency with TCI.

Propofol detection for monitoring of intravenous anaesthesia: a review

“…To the authors' knowledge this represents the first review of propofol detection. There are also researchers who have investigated monitoring propofol in exhaled breath [3,[12][13][14]. However, as the relationship between blood propofol concentration and exhaled breath concentration is not fully understood [15], it remains unclear whether this approach will be applicable to patient monitoring; and gaseous propofol detection techniques will not therefore be covered in this review.…”

Smart Portable Pen for Continuous Monitoring of Anaesthetics in Human Serum With Machine Learning

“…between 10 µM and 60 µM of propofol, and with 10% accuracy around the target concentration [14]. Propofol concentration may be detected with non-invasive techniques in breath [15], [16], nevertheless, the determination of correlation between propofol concentrations in blood and breath presents another challenge [17], that is avoided with direct monitoring in human serum. For this reason, numerous electrochemical sensors have been proposed for detecting and measuring propofol in human serum or blood, achieving high sensing performance [18].…”